Yoga

Roy McMahon / Corbis

A session of yoga for teens with anorexia, bulimia or other eating disorders may provide more than a spiritual and physical boost; it could also help them get over their illness, according to a new study of 50 adolescents, mostly girls. The girls were seriously ill  nearly half had been hospitalized because of their eating disorder  and were being treated at an outpatient clinic at Seattle Children's Hospital. The teens were randomized to receive either their usual treatment at the clinic or that treatment plus two hours a week of yoga classes. The study lasted eight weeks. While the non-yoga teens showed improvement during treatment, they relapsed a month afterward. In the yoga group, improvement started slowly, but a month later, the teens were showing steady gains. The exertion required by some yoga poses had no negative effect on weight, which was reassuring  the last thing dangerously underweight subjects needed to do was shed more pounds. The researchers suspect that yoga may help by reducing the obsessive concern about weight associated with eating disorders. In their study, they wrote, "Food preoccupation may be reduced by focusing attention on yoga poses." Some subjects even expressed this idea directly to the researchers. Said one: "This is the only hour in my week when I don't think about my weight." A larger study is planned to confirm the findings.